


Good girls gather, gather, gather...

by the_other_lutece_sister



Category: BioShock, Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Big Daddy - Freeform, Gen, Other, Rapture, general sadness and despair, mister bubbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 13:54:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9388052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_other_lutece_sister/pseuds/the_other_lutece_sister
Summary: Helena is alone in Rapture - until she awakens an old friend.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Beyond the Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6808909) by [the_other_lutece_sister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_other_lutece_sister/pseuds/the_other_lutece_sister). 



> soundtrack - [Pairbond](https://soundcloud.com/gmtrcks/bioshock-2-pairbond?in=katsadako/sets/beyond-the-sea-an-orphan-black) from the Bioshock 2 OST. (I already used this song in 'Beyond the Sea', but uh...I don't care. It tears at my heart.)

The small figure walked along the street, sticking close to the walls. More of a stagger than a walk, really, but at least keeping upright. Helena kept pace with her, but stayed up high. The last thing she wanted was Rachel seeing her and saying more terrible things, pushing her away because she was angry at Sarah still. Helena sighed deeply. She should know that none of this was Sarah’s fault. If Suchong hadn’t stolen Helena from her family...if Rachel had told them earlier…if Rapture had never been built...you could go on forever trying to find the point at which your world changed.

 

At first she had thought Rachel had followed her somehow, but no. She had just made her way to Olympus Heights on her own, because that’s where the fancy apartments were. She had gone to the Artemis Suites, while the safe room was in the bottom of the Mercury Suites. Helena had sensed her coming, and once she realised Rachel was on her own, had chosen to ignore her best she could. But something had gone wrong, and Rachel was very sick, and now she was heading back to DYAD. Too sick to fight, so Helena decided she should...make sure she got back okay. She hummed. Sarah would want her to look after Rachel, even now.

So she watched, and listened, and took care of a few random splicers before they could take care of Rachel, and then she watched as Rachel walked unevenly to a side door and opened it after glancing around.

Helena squatted on top of a building, and tapped her fingers against her mouth, watching the DYAD building, its massive glass windows reflecting the lights of the city. She reached a decision and bounced down the wall to the ground, flitted across the street, and pulled herself into a vent.

 

The small room was cool and dimly lit, and Helena’s bare feet pattered across the floor to the large figure in the corner. She knelt and placed her hand on the head of the Big Daddy.

 

“Mister Bubbles?” she whispered, “Are you there?”

 

There was no answer. But Helena could sense...something. She concentrated, blocking out everything else and focusing her mind on the great helmet in front of her...oh.

She stood up, and reached behind the slumped figure, pulling him forward so she could reach the panel on the back of the helmet. Opening it exposed a bunch of wires and buttons. She stared at them for a moment, then her fingers danced over them, and she bared her teeth triumphantly as she heard the muffled whine of machinery starting up.

 

The lights on the Big Daddy’s helmet slowly brightened, eight points of amber light, and the figure gave a low, puzzled moan.

Helena squatted directly in front of him, taking his huge gloved hand in both of hers.

“Mister Bubbles? татусь?* Are you awake?

She could sense awareness coming from the suit. She’d always knew that there were real daddies inside the suits and the metal. She could see them, even before her powers had blossomed.

The lights remained amber as the helmet looked left to right, then back at Helena. Another quizzical moan rent the air as he lifted his hand and gestured at Helena, then at the space next to her. Her eyes filled with tears.

 

“I know, Daddy, “ she whispered. “Sarah...had to go away for a while. But she’ll be back soon, okay?” _I know she will_ Helena thought determinedly.

The Big Daddy made a noise like a grudgingly accepting whale, and started the maneuver of getting to his feet, while Helena poked around the room. There wasn’t much there, it had simply been a place for him to stay while the twins were in Little Wonders, or sleeping. They liked to have him close - just in case. The rest of the Big Daddy’s roamed the city, carrying out routine maintenance work in between escorting their Little Sisters on their gathering trips.

There was a sliding door at one end of the room, and Helena placed her hand on it, listening, before sliding it open quietly. Shelves filled with spare equipment met her golden gaze - diving suits, helmets, harpoons, air tanks...even a replacement drill that took an entire shelf to itself. She rubbed the fabric of a diving suit between her fingers thoughtfully.

It was hardy, and flexible, and the size would accommodate her height. She could figure something out for the resulting bagginess. The clothes she had taken from the store were fine, but she’d already torn the trousers. There were boots in here too, not that she minded having bare feet but they did get cold sometimes. She bundled a suit up, shoving it into a helmet, and pulling the boots on, humming. After pulling on her lip thoughtfully, she grabbed a harpoon as well.

 

The Big Daddy was standing now, swaying slightly, and the helmet lights were shining green. Helena smiled. It felt strange on her face after so long. At least she had somebody to keep her company until her sestra came back.

 

Getting back out was easier than she thought. The door led onto the entrance hall of Little Wonders, and the exit into Rapture was just down the end. Helena looked around carefully - it was just as they’d left it when she and Rachel had escaped. No working cameras, no little eyes spying on them. She nodded, sharply, and tugged on the Big Daddy’s hand.

 

“Hop, hop, Mister B!” she said cheerfully.

 

They left the building, hand in hand.

  


                                                              ⇌   ⇌   ⇌

 

After a few weeks, Helena had settled into a routine of sorts. Food runs when she woke up. Trips to Arcadia with Mister Bubbles in the afternoons, or sometimes to Dionysus Park. She thought it rather sad that the large paintings and graceful sculptures found there were mouldering away, with no one to look at them.

While she slept (not at all for the first week; fitfully for months after that), he would stand guard just inside the safehouse door, helmet glowing like a night-light. When she had nightmares - always hands were grabbing her, pulling her away from Sarah; sometimes she dreamt of Rachel too, silver eyes glowing as she spun a cocoon of ice - she would stir in her sleep, twisting and turning as she tried to fight off the whitecoats, waking covered in sweat to see the Big Daddy by the bed, turning this way and that, trying to find the enemies attacking his little one. She would find the whirring sound of the great drill comforting, and drift off back to sleep.

 

During waking hours, Helena would talk to him, tell him about the dreams she had, chatter to him unendingly about Sarah and how she would be back _any day now!_ _Then we can all go home together!_ As the weeks and then months went by, her belief in her sister never wavered, and Mister Bubbles always stood by her. His attention drifted sometimes, as if he occasionally forgot there were no longer two of them, but if they came up against some splicers, he would roar and attack, until Helena was safe.

She didn’t _need_ his protection...but he was still bound to her, and couldn’t help but give it. Helena knew this, in a dim kind of way, but her own conditioning hadn’t completely faded either. The love she felt for the Big Daddy may not have been ‘real’, but she had decided that it was real if she believed it was - and Helena believed _hard_.

 

                                                     ⬳   ⬳   ⬳

 

A new plasmid eventually crept out of the labs of DYAD, or possibly from some backroom down in Hephaestus. They called it Hypnotize, and it was designed to corrupt the protector-conditioning of the BIg Daddies, turning it to the plasmid-user’s advantage. The Big Daddy’s that remained in Rapture had mostly returned to their old jobs in the absence of Little Sisters to protect - soldering leaky pipes, filling in cracks, maintaining the foundations out on the ocean floor. They were eagerly hunted down by splicers who wanted a bit of brute force on their side, taking a cruel joy in enslaving the things that they had once run from.

Helena had felt it, not too far away. She felt _something_ anyway - a green mist that shoved you down into a hole, buried you, let someone else control you. The idea of it made her furious. And very worried.

She was right to be.

 

It happened in Apollo Square, which Helena later found sadly appropriate. So much pain in that place, where there are still bodies swinging from the gallows, and photographs of missing loved ones covering the walls. They’d been doing a food run. Helena had discovered that the Big Daddy could rip open the vending machines with his drill, and the pep bars and little creme cakes would come tumbling out. She’d found an old sack and was gathering up the treats when she heard a giggle somewhere behind her.

It wasn’t the giggle of a child - it had a manic tone and her head spun just in time to see the green globule fly past and hit Mister Bubbles with a _splat._ For a moment she felt like she was sinking in the ocean - as the Big Daddy was engulfed in a cloud of bright green, and a variety of splicers started emerging from dark corners and creeping towards her. Some of them skittered along the ceiling, and walls. One of these began to throw bright, razor-sharp hooks at her, one on the ground fired a pistol. For a long, slow second, Helena seemed to be moving at low speed, like she was pushing against the tide - then she recovered, and directed what she called her ‘moving power’ outwards.

The hooks veered off course and hit the shooter in the face and neck. The pistol bounced up into the air and buried itself in the skull of the hook-thrower. Other splicers were lifted off their feet and slammed back against the walls, or each other. This all happened in a moment, and Helena turned her head _back_ to the Big Daddy as the cloud cleared and he shifted his massive feet, lifted his drill and charged at her. For the briefest second, she froze. Then she leapt.

There was a great roar, and crash, and a section of the solid concrete wall was left cracked and broken. The drill was withdrawn and the Big Daddy swung it back and forth, trying to figure out where his target had disappeared to. Helena clung to the wall above, balanced on a ledge about four inches wide. She thought about teleporting away, pressed her lips together. No. She would not abandon him. All she had to do was keep out of his reach...and take down the crowd of splicers. The effect would wear off and he would be Mister Bubbles again.

She bared her teeth and jumped.

All she could remember afterwards of the fight was screaming and the thud of bodies, strangled gurgling and the taste of blood, the huge drill whirring until it whined, the stink of the splicers.

When the floor was littered with corpses and she crouched on top of the highest gallow, breathing rapidly, the Big Daddy still came. The lights of his helmet glowed deep red, and a deep whale-like roar issued from deep within the suit as the drill battered the about-to-fall-apart wood. Helena inhaled, the gallow started to tip over and she flew through the air, landing on his shoulders.

She grasped the bar at the back of the hemet, while the Big Daddy spun around, roaring, fruitlessly trying to reach her with his one hand. She placed a palm on the back of the helmet, and she could feel the blind fury that enveloped his mind. What was left of his mind, anyway.

She didn’t understand - the plasmid was only temporary. _It was supposed to be temporary! Why wasn’t it stopping? What did they_ do _to you?_ She could feel...no, it was all wrong now, all twisted up with everything else that had been done to him in those labs, the ‘treatment’. There was only one thing Helena could do for her татусь now.

She held on tighter, and raised the harpoon attached to her left arm.

“No more pain, Mister Bubbles,” she said soothingly, and jammed the harpoon into the base of the neck, where a small fabric gap between helmet and suit was. Her eyes were full of tears.

“Sleep now, Daddy.”

 

There was one last, long moan. It sounded sad, and Helena imagined she could hear a hint of relief in it as well. He crashed down onto his knees, the lights in his helmet dimming from red to amber, and finally to green as they blinked out, one by one. The Big Daddy stayed upright for one more moment as his helmet went dark, and then slowly fell forward.

Helena climbed off his back and knelt next to the large pile of metal and canvas and what used to be a human being. She bent, and placed her forehead against the helmet and her hands on either side as she sobbed. She was alone again. But she _knew_ Sarah would come for her. She _believed._

_Sarah would come._

**Author's Note:**

> татусь*daddy
> 
> This was an idea that I _was_ going to include in the main fic, but it didn't quite fit right. So here it is! Because the story just wasn't sad enough already!


End file.
